Do mallards sometimes adopt duckings?

[gattomatto]

Dear All,

the reason why I'm asking is because I think I have witnessed this happening.

First of all around the end of April a group of ducklings seemed to have lost their mother and started following another mother which already had a large number of slightly older babies. The mother initially seemed to try and chase the new comers away but after a few days there she was, resting with 22 ducklings of various size!

And today we saw her again, with still about 20 ducklings getting closer to adult age!

Can something like this happen or do you think this mother acutally had 22 ducklings and kept them together until they're growing their adult feathers?
In both cases I think we can say we have an example of exeptionally good parenting ...

[Adam Cheeseman]

It isn't unusual for mallards to creche their young under the care of one adult. Don't know whether the mothers take turns round-robin style though.

Cheers,

Adam

[JaySteel]

I did some reading on this very subject a couple of days ago after rescuing an abandoned mallard duckling at work.
I was hoping to take it to one of my local parks and release it with other ducklings of a similar size with the theory that the other mother may adopt in into her group of ducklings.

I only managed to find views warning that adult mallard ducks will often attack or even kill other ducklings that stray into their territory which kind of ruined my plans.

Best regards,
Jason

[Crumble]

I raised 7 orphaned mallard ducklings 3 years ago but while their mother was still alive she visited with various numbers ranging from 6 to 9. The year after, a brood of about 5 had a smaller duckling tagging along which was chased away repeatedly.

One thing for certain, they can't count, so it may depend how and when the hangers on appear within a brood.

[gattomatto]

Yeah..I mean I seem to have always seen mother ducks chasing other duck's babies away prior to this particular case...

But on the other hand she really has 22 ducklings (aren't they a bit too many to be born from the same moter?) and a good bunch of them are definitely smaller...so maybe it just is a very execptional case!

But as you said, if they cannot count, at some point the mother might have just gotten a bit distracted and..."ooooops it looks like I have way too many duckling, gosh, I wish I could count!"!

[Synn]

This story from my local RSPB Reserve may help too

Duckling Dilemma | Facebook

[Cowgirl]

Maybe when they have a large brood, they just think, oh what the hell, one more can't do any harm or the bigger the brood the less chance of their own offspring being taken?

When I had my hens, they used to do this all the time, & it was quite amusing to see a hen randomly going past with an enormous string of chicks. Didn't seem to bother them colour or breed either, but that was domesticated birds.

I suppose it's down to individual ducks.